


Dollhouse

by JinxQuickfoot



Series: Whumptoberverse [8]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint and Laura Barton's Family, Day 8, F/M, Horror, Hostage Situations, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Sam Wilson, Hurt Scott Lang, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Isolation, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Monsters, Protective Clint Barton, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26987911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxQuickfoot/pseuds/JinxQuickfoot
Summary: The torture bingo card.It was an old joke that had been passed around the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with a darker sense of humor. Phil had disapproved. Fury had pretended not to know. Clint had joined in right away, only to find he had been able to fill out half the squares before the game even began courtesy of a life of bad cards, poor decisions, and worse luck.No one was ever supposed to win.----------------------------------------------------------------------------The Barton family gets an uninvited guest.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Scott Lang, Clint Barton & Tony Stark, Clint Barton & Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton/Laura Barton, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: Whumptoberverse [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921831
Comments: 127
Kudos: 173
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober 2020 Day 8
> 
> Prompt: Isolation
> 
> Relationship: Clint & (surprise)
> 
> This one gets...look it gets dark. Clint-centred fics tend to turn out that way when I write them.
> 
> Can be read as a standalone, but exists in the same timeline as the rest of the Whumptoberverse.

The torture bingo card.

It was an old joke that had been passed around the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with a darker sense of humor. Phil had disapproved. Fury had pretended not to know. Clint had joined in right away, only to find he had been able to fill out half the squares before the game even began courtesy of a life of bad cards, poor decisions, and worse luck.

It was a way to laugh off their pain; to find the joke behind the meaningless and cruel torture they were all subjected to one way or another. ‘Mind control’ had been added as part of the joke, an idea from a night with too many beers and not enough sleep, a way to stop anyone from winning. No one was supposed to win. No one was ever supposed to fill out the whole card.

Clint had never collected the prize money. The other participants had turned their backs on him after Loki. He’d pretended not to care. They weren’t the first, or the last. No matter that it had happened just after losing Phil. He still had Natasha. And then he had the team. He’d framed the bingo card in his rooms at Avengers’ Towers, continuing the joke on his own, far from where Laura would ever see it.

She knew anyway. Just like she knows Clint would take every category on that scoreboard a second time to get out of _this._ This had never been on a bingo card. No one, even drunk off their asses on piss poor S.H.I.E.L.D. beer, had come close to this.

It sleeps in their bed at night. They don’t. So many times, Clint has been close to breaking, to reaching out and snapping its neck in two. But it seems to read his mind before the thoughts even cross it. It shuffles closer to Laura whenever one of the murderous thoughts arises, snuggling into her arms and staring at him with resentful eyes.

He’s fast, but not fast enough, and they both know it.

It likes him least, but it can’t do anything about that. Clint is part of the set; the happy, joking dad who makes pancakes in the morning and tucks it into bed at night and reads it bedtime stories. His kids listen too, quiet and small and terrified. The moment he can, Clint is going to rip it apart for making his kids live in fear.

He would always get ‘the look’ when those thoughts rose in him, the sweetness and innocence melting away into resentful hate.

_Who the fuck are you to resent me?_ Clint shoots at it. _You’re the parasite here. Get out._

It doesn’t. It’s made it very clear that it’s staying, and there’s nothing Clint can do about it.

They’ve always been so careful. It hasn’t been easy. Clint misses them; Laura gets lonely. But they had accepted the isolation the moment the pregnancy test had turned positive. They make a few compromises; Fury flies Clint home when he can, Laura takes lovers in his absence, albeit carefully vetted ones. The farm over is a cover for witness protection, one of Phil’s ideas, the farmhouse deliberately designed for children so Cooper and Lila can have playmates. They travel to the city only with false identities, making a game of it when the kids were younger.

It takes a toll. There’s only so long phone calls can feed a relationship, and then there are missions where even that isn’t an option, sometimes for weeks, even months. Those are the worst, when Clint comes home to find his kids have jumped a dress size, picking up new words and hobbies and traits he doesn’t recognize. Cooper can be resentful, even teary, and while Lila is the more mature, understanding one, her sullen silences after a long mission are almost worse.

Their attitudes have improved since the Avengers, since more of Clint’s efforts are televised and marketed as action figures and comics, since he can bring them stories of Iron Man and Hulk and Captain America and Thor. It masks the hollowness he feels every time he leaves them, despite the good cause.

He had quit after Ultron, after a close call struck too close to home. He wasn’t going to miss out on Nate’s childhood like he had so much of Cooper and Lila’s. He was going to stay. He was going to make his kids feel safe.

Then this thing had shown up and destroyed all of that in one Tuesday afternoon.

There’s an incident one morning, when it touches Nate for the first time. It’s been careful with Nate, unsure. Cooper and Lila it can talk to, play with, but Nate bores and confuses it, and it resents the toddler’s constant need for attention. Nate’s too young to understand why he suddenly has a third sibling in the house but he knows, can feel the constant dread and terror of his family members. He wails almost constantly, Laura or Clint desperately trying to calm him. It doesn’t like the crying. The crying makes it angry.

Clint and Laura are in their familiar roles, Clint playing some dumb board game with it on his lap while Laura irons his shirts, even though she _never_ irons his shirts or anything else, that’s always been Clint’s job, should still be Clint’s job, when Nate starts wailing and then _it_ is moving.

Clint gets there first, going for the kitchen knife he’s stashed under the couch days ago, ready to end it if it so much as breathes on his youngest son. When it retaliates, Clint is just glad it takes it out on him and no one else. That is, until it drags him out to the barn and leaves him there in chains, bound to the tractor even Tony hadn’t been able to fix, and doesn’t come back until morning.

He’s left there to wonder what it’s doing to his family for hours.

When it finally releases him, he comes back expecting to find the worst, only to realize he doesn’t know what the worst is anymore. 

They’re alive. Unharmed. Nate is asleep. Cooper and Lila play. Laura makes breakfast. She offers him a smile and steals his line. “Good morning, honey. Pancakes or eggs?”

The look in their eyes is far and distant and haunted. They look like when S.H.I.E.L.D. agents return from the worst of missions; a part of his life Clint and Laura have given nearly everything to keep away from their children.

So Clint says “Eggs” and gives Laura a dopey kiss on the cheek and it squeals with delight that Mom and Dad are so happy to play along, even as Clint doesn’t miss that all the knives have been taken from the kitchen.

***

Of all the people to come check on them first, Tony would have been near the bottom of Clint’s list.

He falls right into its trap, barely getting out some quip about the Bartons breeding like rabbits before realizing their fourth ‘child’ is nothing but, and then he’s caught too.

It loves him. Clint is shoved to one side as Tony is forced into the patriarchal lead instead, shooting Clint scared and apologetic looks as it’s now him that kisses Laura in the kitchen, that sleeps beside her (and it) at night. Clint catches a glimpse of them once on his way to the kids’ room. Tony is on his back, staring at the ceiling with it curled up to his chest, its arms around his throat.

The selfish part of Clint is glad Tony’s here; glad that now it’s him that is stuck with sleepless nights with a monster, because at least it means he gets to sleep in the kids’ room. Lila and Cooper have long since gathered every spare blanket and pillow they can find to make a nest in the back corner of Cooper’s bedroom, as far away from the door as possible. The farmhouse is big enough for the kids to have separate rooms, but Clint can hardly blame his daughter for not wanting to sleep in her own bed alone at night, or for taking Nate out of the nursery to curl up with them. He joins them, putting himself between them and the door, leaving the curtains open so that the doorway is illuminated by moonlight.

Cooper cries most nights, soft and small like he’s trying to hide it, and Lila says nothing, just stares straight ahead, and that’s worse. Clint wants to reassure them, but he made a promise to his family a long time ago not to fill them with empty words. He never knows if he’s not coming back from a mission, and every departure is a goodbye without tears or lies.

So instead he stares at the dark doorway, trying not to picture the thing in bed with his wife, and waits for morning.

***

It doesn’t take Tony long to figure out that technology no longer works at the Bartons’ farm.

It’s not broken. It just doesn’t work anymore. Not their phones, not the quinjet Tony came in, or his suit. Even their microwave and oven lie dormant. Clint is grateful that he never got around to replacing their gas stove, that he and Laura are always prepared for the worst and have stores that could outlast the apocalypse, living off canned food and their coop of chickens. It limits what they can cook, but it doesn’t seem to care about that. Clint doubts it needs to eat at all - breakfast, lunch and dinner are just part of the game of Happy Families, making Tony now ask “Pancakes or eggs?” every morning like clockwork. It slurps its milk like Cooper, demands its tinned pears quartered like Lila’s. That was fine when breakfast was Clint’s job, but now Tony is Dad instead, and Clint will never be able to fathom how a mind like Tony Stark’s can wield technology like magic but can’t find a way around a kitchen to (literally) save himself.

He’s doing ok until he burns the pancakes.

Laura fusses around him as he works, playing the doting wife while really steering him in the right direction, providing enough extra laughter and kisses that it claps happily along, thrilled to have such a willing participant in its game. Clint isn’t sure what his role is anymore - maybe the happy uncle, or loyal nanny, and he’s just fine with that because it means he gets to hold onto Nate, trying not to tense up, because if Nate feels his dad is scared he’ll cry. So Clint pulls faces and dangles toys, and the thing gets the full attention of Laura and Tony and seems happy with that compromise until steam is rising up from the stove.

Laura is instantly there, rescuing the pan by wrapping her apron around the handle and dumping it in the sink, but it’s too late. The game is ruined. 

Tony’s eyes find Clint’s, wary and confused but not scared and of course, Tony hasn’t seen the consequences yet. He didn’t have to live through the early days of learning the rules, which was really one rule; play the game.

It throws a tantrum after that, and Clint grabs Cooper and Laura pulls Lila against her, each parent shielding their children, but it isn’t them that are hurt.

Tony no longer has to ask “Pancakes or eggs?” in the mornings. There are no more chickens to lay them, and it takes Clint a full day to finish cleaning the blood and feathers out of the backyard.

***

Natasha and Rhodey come next, each seeking out respective best friends who have dropped off the grid without a trace, Clint and Tony the bait that pulls two more flies into its waiting web.

The first few days it keeps them all together, reveling in the attention of so many toys at once, but it tires more easily, its attention distracted. It never takes to Rhodey, whose braces lie outside as useless as the War Machine suit, who therefore doesn’t fit into what it wants him to be. Natasha it takes to more fondly, swapping her out for Laura, Clint guesses for novelty. Now it’s Tony and Natasha who walk the routine of loving parents, and even though he lets her initiate every touch, Tony does better with this partner than with Laura. Laura and Clint are given the task of babysitting Nate while it picnics outside with Tony and Natasha and their two very young-feeling children, as they watch helplessly from the window.

Then it banishes Rhodey to the barn, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to let him out again.

Rhodey’s absence hurts Tony’s performance, not ever quite able to smooth out all the corners as Clint and Natasha have long since learned to. But as long as he’s trying, it doesn’t seem to mind. In the evenings, it climbs into his lap and demands bedtime stories. Tony’s so tired by now that one time he reads the same page three times before a gentle nudge from Natasha gets him to turn it. It either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. It doesn’t want the story, not really. It just wants the ritual, the same one it wants every day, over and over and over again with no end.

It complains it’s not tired as Tony says it’s bedtime, which is part of the script as well, and then Natasha is taking it off to brush its teeth and help it into pajamas as Clint and Laura climb into the nest in their eldest son’s room and try to sleep.

Nate grumbles, refusing to settle until Clint pulls him into his arms, extracting himself from the blankets and pacing the room as quietly as possible. They’re not part of the game anymore, not in here, but that doesn’t mean they stop belonging to it. Here they became toys not played with but stowed away until it’s really to pull them out again. Toys aren’t meant to move on their own.

A footstep sends his heart though his mouth, until he realizes it’s Natasha framed in the doorway. His breath catches, shaking his head at her. They’re not meant to talk to each other, not meant to go off script, whether it could hear them or not. It knew. It always knew.

It’s not quite dark enough for her face to be obscured, and he sees her, the way she doesn’t let anyone else see her ever, her expression and body language for once naked. She’s terrified.

Natasha doesn’t fear death. Neither of them do, not with that they face. But _this_ \- forced into a role she doesn’t want to play without an out - is enough for Clint to cross the room and press his forehead to hers, Natasha sliding one hand around his back and running another through Nate’s hair. The toddler gurgles happily; a sharp noise, too loud, that snaps them both out of it. They know they can’t do this, can’t go off-script for this long. They hesitate anyway, each unwilling to let go of the other, of this brief moment of comfort, until Clint reminds her about Tony. She nods, grateful, knowing he’s doing more than protecting their friend that is currently alone with it. He’s giving her a new role; not a tool to be used and played with but a protector. Don’t go because you have to; go because you’re choosing to help your friend.

As Clint settles back in beside Laura, his own choice occurs to him. He has his whole family with him, the thing happily snuggled in with Tony and Natasha in the master bedroom. And even as he hates himself for thinking it, he wonders if he could just leave.

He doesn’t know how far they’d get. The quinjet isn’t working, and neither are their cars, but the witness protection house is the next one over and it’s occupied. The kids ran across there sometimes to play with the twin girls who had moved in there three months ago. He doubts whatever spell this thing has over their technology would extend that far, not without questions being raised. If he could just get to a phone…

He’d be condemning Natasha and Tony to do it, and he knows it. It acts like a child but it’s smart; it has one of them with it at all times. And it currently has Tony, who had only come here to see if Clint was ok after not returning any of their calls for too long. Who Clint knew was playing along more for the kids’ sake than his own, had watched Rhodey get dragged away to be chained up in a barn rather than let that thing get near them.

And Natasha. _Natasha._

Clint hates the thing more than he has up until that moment, because even if he doesn’t go through with it, it’s made him choose. Now he knows that there is a situation, as screwed up and unlikely as it is, in which he’d knowingly let Natasha die. He hates it for that knowledge he’s never going to be able to forget. Because Natasha and Tony are his friends, and he’d die for them with a smile and wave, but these are his _kids,_ and there’s no competition. There hasn’t even been a second thought, and if he gets the chance he’ll kill it just for that.

He’s plotting how fast they’ll have to move to get to the neighbors, how quietly they can move, when he feels it.

This time it’s not Natasha in the doorway.

They lock eyes. It’s something they all try to avoid doing, making direct eye contact with _those_ eyes isn’t for the strong let alone the faint of heart, but Clint does, and for a moment he lets it all out. The fury. The resentment. The hatred.

He hopes he’s right about it being able to read his mind. He hopes it can see every way he’s going to dismantle it. Doesn’t matter that it has taken the knives. Clint will find a way.

It darkens the doorway until morning, its eyes not leaving Clint for a moment through the longest night of his life.

***

The next day, Natasha is gone.

Laura is back in the role of Mom, and Clint doesn’t question it. Lila follows his lead, and for that reason and many others if Clint had to pick a successor to the Hawkeye name it would be her, but Cooper is different. Cooper’s an artist at heart, judging by the sketches and acrylics that cover the house, and he can’t help asking where Auntie Nat is. It _hates_ that, and Clint is both petrified and dying to ask the same thing even as he assures his son that she can’t come to play right now.

He looks at the thing as he says it, trying to show cooperation, to make up for last night’s transgression. It stares him down as Tony cooks breakfast. They’re not able to make pancakes anymore, not without the chickens to lay the eggs, but Laura has concocted a substitute with canned apple sauce. It doesn’t notice. Clint is sure it doesn’t taste food anyway.

Tony is careful not to so much as singe a single pancake, but he’s silently losing it, and it’s not hard to conclude why. It’s been two days, and it hasn’t let them leave the house except for the picnic. It hasn’t let them go to the barn. And if Clint’s right in his theory that it only thinks eating and drinking is part of the game, then he doubts it’s left Rhodey any water. Rhodey, who means everything to Tony that Natasha means to Clint. And now it’s got Nat out there too.

Laura saves them, and Clint has never loved her more than when she asks it what kind of cake it would like for its birthday. It doesn’t know what a birthday is, but it takes to the new game even before Laura describes the gifts and the decorations and then finishes with the most important part, the very essential part which you can’t have birthdays without, which is to have as many guests as possible. Tony kisses her for real then, pressing his lips to her cheek with his eyes squeezed shut, his only way to tell her thank you without giving the game away.

They have its birthday that night, and spend the day cutting old paper into chains that they string around the beams, dragging out the Christmas tree and all its lights and the fake pumpkins from Halloween because why not, and Clint lets himself get into it for the kids’ sake, letting them feed off his energy. Cooper gets absorbed in painting new glass-stained ornaments for the tree, and Lila even patiently explains to it how streamers are built and they work together under Clint’s careful eye. It’s so absorbed in the crafts that for once it doesn’t need the constant approval and admiration of a parent, so Clint passes Nate off to Tony to downgrade him to Nanny, to give him a break from the exhausting role asDad, as Laura pulls together a small feast in the kitchen. 

By evening they’re all wearing party hats Laura has dug out from a dusty cupboard, and Rhodey and Natasha are situated around the table with them. Rhodey is slumped against Tony’s side, Tony’s arms clinging possessively around his shoulders. Clint has never gotten the chance to get to know Rhodey well, and wasn't sure if that was a blessing or a curse as he found the Colonel chained to the tractor where it had left Clint on that terrible night. Rhodey hadn’t said a word, just let Clint and Natasha clean him up and help him into a spare set of Clint’s clothes, then let himself be carried in Clint’s arms back to the farmhouse.

Decades of performing for the media lets Tony keep his million-kilowatt smile and easy demeanor even as he nurses Rhodey back to health amongst the crowded table of rubber Halloween spiders and Christmas baubles and birthday cake. Rhodey’s eyes are slightly sunken, and he’s struggling to keep them open even as Tony feeds him sips of water and pieces of boiled chicken and broccoli, prompting him even as Rhodey refuses. Clint gets it as he pushes thirds at Natasha. They don’t know when they’re going to get the next opportunity to feed them.

They play games afterward, musical chairs and pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey, letting it win every time. Clint plays it up for Lila and Cooper’s sake, even though Cooper has been too old for such games for years and Lila never took to them. They join in obediently anyway, and Clint’s so proud of them and hates it, because he should be proud his kids for being kind or smart, for Cooper’s art or Lila’s bow, not for managing to keep it together while a monster keeps them hostage and turns their home into its dollhouse.

The night gets late and it gets tired, or pretends to be. Clint doesn’t actually think it sleeps - that’s just part of the happy families routine. Tony and Laura are still playing Mom and Dad, so they prepare it for bed after it’s tugged a still exhausted Rhodey out of Tony’s reluctant arms. When it becomes clear it’s planning to drag him all the way back to the barn, Clint steps in, offering to help it put its toys away now it’s time for bed. He uses those exact words and they taste like bitter copper, but it works, because it takes Natasha by the hand and lets Clint scoop Rhodey up instead.

Rhodey’s jaw is set the entire walk back to the barn, Clint guesses more from humiliation than fear. He fists a hand in Clint’s shirt, tapping out a pattern Clint recognizes as morse on his back. _Told others we come here. They follow._

Clint grits his teeth, unsure if that’s meant to be a reassurance of rescue or a warning that more of their comrades are going to meet the same fate. Clint supposes it doesn’t matter. They’re coming either way, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

It chains Rhodey and Natasha back up in the barn, eyes on Clint as it does so. He keeps his face neutral, decides that’s the safest route, knowing this is punishment for his thoughts of running last night. When it’s done, it comes over to Clint with arms raised, making grabbing hands and then squealing with delight when Clint obliges and pulls it up for a piggyback ride. It locks its arms around his throat and digs its legs into his sides and he doesn’t react, just trots dutifully back the house and tries to fight off the waves of disgust and loathing at having the thing so close to him.

It scrambles off him the moment they’re inside, throwing itself at Tony instead, demanding baths and stories and warm milk and Clint recognizes the dismissal. Tony and Laura take it off to the main bathroom for the nighttime routine as Clint takes the kids to the smaller one, not thinking of his wife and his friend and focussing on his children instead, letting Lila and Cooper use the shower while he washes Nate up in the sink. Nate has stopped grumbling over the past few days, but he’s oddly quiet. No crying, but no laughing either, and Clint doesn’t want to think about what that means for his toddler’s mental health, because for now he just needs to cope and get through. He murmurs loving things to his son all the way through the bath, trying to counteract the presence that’s wrapped up the house like smog.

When they make for bed, it asks for Nate.

It’s a step too far, but this thing knows nothing about ‘too far’. It has pried its way into Clint’s head like a certain Asgardian God of Mischief, seen his priorities, knows that if he gets the chance he’ll take the kids and run even if he has to leave Tony and Nat and Laura (god Laura, her too, and the fact that she’d want him to doesn’t make that thought any easier) to do it.

Why it doesn’t just chain him up in the barn with the others is anyone’s guess, but Clint has a fair idea. Natasha and Rhodey are put away, still technically playing, but Clint’s not. Clint’s resisting, breaking the suspension of disbelief, and it’s not having it. It wants him to stay here willingly. It wants to know he’ll play along when it wants him to. 

He’s not letting his baby sleep with that thing. There’s no way. There’s no way to not let it happen either.

Lila saves them, stepping forward and asking if it’s ok if she sleeps with Mommy and Daddy tonight too, putting one hand in Laura’s and another in Tony’s without so much as blinking. Laura says how that’s an excellent idea as Tony keeps his eyes fixed on the floor, and Clint knows how he feels. Tony prides himself on being able to think or build his way out of anything, and the universe has finally thrown him a situation where he can’t. He’s been almost silent since Natasha and Rhodey got taken away again, only speaking when the script calls it.

Clint wants to rip the thing’s head from its shoulders as it leads his wife and daughter and friend away to his bed, but instead he pulls his sons away into their nest of pretend safety.It’s the first night Cooper doesn’t cry. Nate doesn’t either. They’re retreating into themselves, somewhere Clint can’t reach them. 

This time, the thing doesn’t come to the doorway, and that’s worse, because that means it stays close to the others all night. Clint no longer thinks about running. Apparently, he can sacrifice a friend or a wife but a daughter is his line. He’s almost relieved he still has one. It almost makes the thoughts easier; that, if the thing tries anything else in retaliation, he hopes it goes for Tony first.


	2. Chapter 2

The cavalry comes, and makes everything worse.

They’re not the first. The witness protection family next door, safely stowed away under the alias of the McGintys, inevitably make their way across the paddock to the Barton farm. It’s a kind gesture from good people concerned for their neighbors' lack of contact; concern that turned to worry when no one answered the phone. They’re hidden away for reasons Clint no longer has the security clearance to know, but he doesn’t need that to know they’re civilians. It’s clear from the way they react when they realize the trap they’ve walked into; from the decision to see for themselves instead of calling New S.H.I.E.L.D. for backup.

At first, it’s delighted. Now it has four more party guests for its birthday, which has become a nightly occurrence. Unable to bake without their oven, Laura constructs cake out of layered pancakes with mashed tinned peaches as frosting, and if they get out of this Clint is never going to eat another pancake for the rest of his life.

When they get out of this. Not if. When when when. 

Only after it kills one of the dads do the McGintys learn to play along, the twin girls crying silently throughout. Clint and Natasha each take one, guiding them through the party, while Rhodey coaxes their remaining father through a game of pass-the-parcel where it wins every prize.

The McGintys only have to sit through one birthday.

The Avengers arrive the next morning, Steve and Sam and Scott, and Clint wonders how on earth Peter got them to convince them to bring him along because he’s here as well. All of them are ready to fight. They walk into a beautiful picnic spread instead, Clint and Tony and Laura playing happy families with the kids and the neighbors; the perfect, peaceful, picturesque Sunday.

Peter spots it first, spider-sense locking onto the not-child in Tony’s lap. Clint is already lunging for Lila, slapping a hand over her eyes and pulling Nate closer to him as Laura does the same for Cooper. It’s instinctual, parent winning out over agent, and Clint remembers too late the two other children with them, left unshielded, as they see the Avengers and think they’re safe.

The thing either hates being so outnumbered or is furious that its game has been ruined so thoroughly or both, because it shrieks and keens as it scrambles onto Tony’s back, Tony not daring to throw it off as it scrabbles for purchase around his neck. They all waver, having no clear shot at it without hitting Tony as well, and that small hesitation is enough.

It doesn’t take long for the newcomers to learn the rules. They keep their heads better than the McGintys, who try to run the moment the Avengers land by the front porch.

Clint spends the rest of the day digging four graves out by the barn.

At first it plays with all of them, delighted and thrilled to have so many toys at once. But Steve worries it, too big and too strong for comfort, and its not long before it sends him to the barn for safekeeping. Sam it takes to better, trying him out as Dad, but it’s become too attached to Tony to let anyone else hold that role for long.

It adores Peter.

It never leaves him alone. It sits on his lap during meals, demands he play with it at all hours of the day, sucks its thumb and twists its nails into his hair as Tony reads it stories at night. It pulls him into Mom and Dad’s bed at night, snuggling into him until dawn.

Tony steps up his game after Peter arrives. Clint might even buy it if he didn’t know better; the constant smiling and joking and care that he didn’t think Stark was capable of until a certain chatty teenager moved into the Compound. But the air of desperation underneath it all can’t be masked by piggyback rides or picture books. Clint knows what he’s doing - he’d be doing the exact same thing if it was one of his kids the thing had taken such a liking to. Tony’s practically broadcasting it; _look, I’m such a good Dad, don’t send me to the barn, don’t replace me, don’t find any reason for me to leave Peter alone with you._

Scott is a godsend. He morphs easily into the goofy persona Clint has only seen on video chats with Cassie Lang. He’s full of endless ideas for fun and games, never seems to run out of patience. He pulls apart the cardboard boxes that had once held emergency food supplies, too quickly depleting, and builds a playground for it through the house. Tony helps eagerly, relieved to have a project, to build and create and feel useful.

It loves the playground, although not the limited view of everyone in the house. Laura and Clint are banished to outside with Nate, and Sam is sent to the barn, while it plays with Lila and Cooper in their cardboard jungle. Laura and Clint splay out on the grass on a mockingly gorgeous day, listening to whoops of excitement from Scott inside, egging it on. He occasionally offers encouragement to Lila and Cooper as well, trying to give them a day of fun in this horror show, and Clint has no idea how he’s going to repay Scott for that but he will find a way. Later.

For now, he lies on the grass beside his wife, their son in between them, knowing he should be thinking of escape route and battle strategies. But when he reaches for those thoughts, there’s nothing there. He and Laura don’t talk. They just stare at the sky, and wait for it to have use of them again.

It gets so caught up in the game that it forgoes the birthday party, skipping right into the bedtime routine, and the air is thicker than usual with the tension that their missing friends won’t be getting a break from their isolation tonight.

Scott is ditched at bedtime, serving his purpose as a fun, daytime game only. He elects to help Clint with the kids instead as Laura plays Mom, but as soon as they get to the small bathroom any energy he’s mustered from the day is gone. Clint sits him in the corner and tells him to stay there. Scott nods, too exhausted to argue, and curls into himself. 

Scott and Clint had grown close over the extended period of house arrest, bonding over their collected loss of time with their families. And while Clint is sure Scott would never pull Cassie near this in a million years, he can’t imagine having to play fun uncle to that thing and knowing that there was a very real chance you’d never get to see your own kid again.

No, wait. He can't think like that.

The days under house arrest had to be filled somehow, and there was only so much sparring and binge viewing they could do, and so Clint had elected to teach Scott ASL. Scott’s out of practice, but after Clint gets Lila and Cooper in the shower he shakes Scott out of his daze, refusing to feel guilty as he reluctantly pulls his eyes open again. They stumble through the questions Clint needs to ask, Scott finger-spelling when he doesn’t know the word. Clint doesn’t know if this counts as speaking off-script, and it takes far longer than comfortable for Scott to convey that no, this wasn’t a sanctioned mission and no, New S.H.I.E.L.D. and anyone outside of the Avengers doesn’t know where they are.

Clint pushes on that last point, on the remaining teammate who isn’t here. The one who isn’t a teammate anymore, not officially, but is in every way that matters. Scott admits he doesn’t know, but there is one person left at that Compound who knows about Clint’s off-grid farmhouse. Bruce Banner is far from a detective but he’s smart enough to be one, to figure out where his missing friends are gone, and at this point Clint doesn’t even care if he brings the whole of New S.H.I.E.L.D. and the CIA and the FBI to his so carefully hidden front door, as long it means an end to this. 

The signed conversation takes whatever stamina Scott has left, so Clint leaves him to rest against the laundry basket as he takes the kids through their cramped nightly routine. When he turns back, Scott’s shaking.

Clint gets it. He remembers his first days with this thing, how it drains you when one wrong move spells disaster. Clint had just been following script. Scott had been _inventing_ it, never knowing if the words on the typewriter were going to be approved, and then trying to make it better for everyone else involved as well. He’s spent, and this thing is going to expect him to do it all over again tomorrow.

Scott doesn’t give more than a surprised yelp as Clint starts to help him out of his clothes. Privacy is a luxury for the free. The showers are always short, with no electricity for hot water and saving their gas for the stove. Scott is shivering by the time Clint pulls him out of the water and towels him off like he would one of his kids, not giving either of them time to be embarrassed about it before he’s helping Scott into clean clothes and pushing a spare toothbrush into his hands.

That evening Cooper volunteers to be Clint’s bond in Lila’s place, and Clint brings Scott into their nest, putting Lila and Nate between them and covering them all in blankets before situating himself between them and the door, vigilance setting in instead of sleep. He catches Scott’s eye, still wary and confused, glancing towards the door every few minutes, so Clint signs to him to rest; he’s watching his back.

For the first time, Clint thinks maybe they can do this if they can share the load. If Scott can distract it enough during the day for Clint and Laura to rest, Clint can take care of him in return at night. If Tony and Peter play off each other, Dad and doting Big Brother, spitting the familial roles between them. If Cooper can sleep next to that thing for a night to relieve Lila and vice versa. They can all take a turn at the whipping post to let the others rest, until Bruce does something to get them away.

Maybe they can do this, Clint thinks just as Lila begins to cry.

She hasn’t cried once, not through this whole ordeal, but Clint knows that it’s the idea of her big brother curled up with it, when she thinks it should still be her instead, that’s finally broken the dam. She’s so brave, and so good; they both are, despite who their father is.

Natasha had beaten the crap out of him in training the day after he had admitted that, halfway down a bottle of whiskey after a particularly nasty mission gone wrong. She had pinned him to the matt and wouldn’t let him up as she had  insisted that the Barton children get those traits from both parents. They were words intended for him to keep. On good days, Clint believes them. 

Clint had been so sure Scott was asleep, passed out from exhaustion, but at the first quiet sniff he rolls over, holding his hands up so they’re blocking the moon from the window. Then they begin to twist, casting rabbits and foxes and elephants on the wall. Lila stills, transfixed, watching the show. Clint rolls over so Nate can see as well, and after a moment lets himself fall into it too; the magic shapes appearing and disappearing on the wall, a whole menagerie of animals just for them.

They’re interrupted by a piercing shriek from the doorway.

Scott’s hands snap closed, eyes wide with terror as it howls, furious on being excluded from the game, at the betrayal and unfairness of it all. Scott scrambles back into the corner of the room before he recovers, realizing what needs to happen. He holds up a shaking hand in the shape of a camel and uses the other one to pat his lap, the invite clear.

It calms a little then, sniffling. It’s dragged Peter in the room with it by the hand, Tony trailing anxiously behind, and Clint is at least reassured that Laura has kept Cooper away. It pulls Peter into the nest so it can cuddle up to him and Scott to watch the show, and Nate begins bawling at the defilement of this last safe space.

Clint’s on his feet in a second, hurrying past Tony in the doorway, taking the crying toddler away from where it might ruin the game. He feels the brush of Tony’s hand as he passes in what might have been an attempt at comfort or a plea not to go, but he doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t look at Scott, or Peter, or at his daughter, whose tear tracks are barely dried, as he takes Nate into the yard before yelling soundlessly at the sky.

***

Peter isn’t looking good.

He’s been hiding it well, but the morning after the shadow puppets he’s almost slumped into his apple-sauce pancakes, bone white and trembling. Scott looks almost as bad, and Clint knows how a sleepless night next to that thing can drain you. Scott’s still trying though, arranging jerky and tinned fruit on the pancake to make a face before pretending it can talk, putting on a silly voice. It’s only half-working, but it’s drawing enough of the attention off Peter that Tony tries ruffling his hair affectionately, disguising that he’s actually checking for a fever. Peter slumps back into the touch, unable to hide the small groan when Tony’s fingers brush his temples. Tony jerks his hands away but Peter grabs them, guiding them back, and Tony seems to understand because he starts to massage Peter’s head and neck as tears of relief spark under the teenager's closed eyelids.

It’s not having it. It snarls at Tony, who hastily lets go. A whimper slips out of Peter at the loss of contact, and that’s enough for Clint to guess at what’s wrong. He’s seen Peter’s spider-sense in action before, the way the kid can sense trouble before even he and Nat, with all their training, can. This thing must be triggering it tenfold, and there’s no precedent for what happens if Peter’s danger senses are alerted and then never shut off.

Peter wrenches his eyes open, picks up on the situation, and offers the thing a teary smile before he starts mimicking Tony’s movements on its head and it crows with delight. 

Peter lasts until lunchtime. Then he hits the floor.

Tony’s there a second later, trying to grab Peter’s jerking limbs as he froths at the mouth. Clint catches him before he can, telling him not to restrain him, that it will only make it worse. The thing throws itself on Peter’s chest, at first angry, and then distressed as it realizes that Peter isn’t misbehaving but breaking, and when it realizes that it throws its head back and wails.

Clint has seen it throw tantrums before, but not like this. This isn’t anger at dolls that won’t do what they’re told or hurt at being left out of a game. This is grief.

Nothing will console it. Recognizing Tony’s need to be at Peter’s side, Laura pours everything she has into the soothing mother role, rocking and shushing until it screams and brays and tears around the house instead. Clint gives Nate to Cooper and shuffles him and Lila into a corner, blocking them from the thing’s sight, and but his eyes are on Peter. Peter, who’s still spasming on the ground as Tony looks on helpless desperation, unable to help because the only thing to do is to get Peter far away from the danger overloading him, and they can’t move him. But maybe Clint can move it.

The moment he thinks it the thing whips around to face him, eyes wide as it reads the idea on Clint’s mind. It’s not angry. It’s pleading with him. Clint feels a stab of sympathy.

Then he takes it back. This thing doesn’t deserve his pity.

It glares at him when he thinks that, but is too preoccupied with getting Peter back to retaliate, so it lets Clint take the lead.

He thinks he’s prepared for the sight that awaits him in the barn. He’s not, and he’s definitely not prepared for the smell. Four heads jerk up as they enter, tensing, but Clint just focuses on one and points at him. 

Sam’s unsteady on his feet from being restrained for so long without water, so Clint wraps an arm around his waist and lets him slump against his side as he guides him back to the farmhouse. He doesn’t look at the others. There’s nothing he can do for them.

No, wait. Not _them._ Not _others_. They have names. Natasha. Steve. Rhodey. People. Friends. Family. Not things.

He leads Sam back to Peter and the pararescue does his best, but the only cure is space and it’s not going to give it. It lies on Peter's chest and wails as Sam tries to patiently explain about food and water and sleep, even though he says not to give Peter anything yet, even though he can’t anyway with Peter unconscious.

After a couple of hours, and Peter not waking up, the first crack Clint has ever seen in Sam’s professional pararescue persona shows as his voice breaks when he tells Tony there’s nothing else he can do.

It’s like a switch has been flipped, and suddenly it doesn’t want anything to do with Peter, discarding him in upset and frustration. It lets Clint carry him back out to the barn, both him and Sam swiping a pack of bottled water on their way. Clint’s seen Peter lift an airport gangway and yet the kid’s never looked so small as he does in Clint’s arms right now, pale and still and hardly breathing. Clint would bet that it’s only his incredible healing factor that means that he’s breathing at all.

The mood swivels again as they reach the barn and it’s time to say goodbye, and then it’s more tears and more howling  as Clint lies Peter in a far corner, wrapping him in an old blanket that wreaks of hay and damp and wood rot and tries to make him as comfortable as possible. Sam whisks around the others, pouring water down their throats and offering what comfort he can before it goes to put him back in storage as well.

For the first time, they manage a compromise. It only chains Sam up by the feet, leaving his hands free and in reach of Peter, although not in range of the others, and Clint shoves the second case of water in Sam’s direction as he scoops the thing up into his arms and it sobs into his shoulder as he carries it back to the farmhouse.

That night it forgoes Mom and Dad’s bed and instead insists they all sleep in the nest with it in the middle. It clings to Tony with one hand and Scott with the other and it’s only when Clint is pressed up against Laura, inhaling the faint scent of sweat and lavender shampoo that he realizes that it had left Laura alone with the kids, twice, and Laura hadn’t run, and Clint hadn’t attacked.

Neither of them had even thought about it until the opportunity had passed.

***

Clint loses his last shred of hope the moment Bucky Barnes steps out of the helicopter.

He can’t blame Bruce, not really. Clint had sworn them all to secrecy after he brought them here during Ultron; to never tell a soul with even a hint of a government connection about the farmhouse, no matter how dire the situation. He thinks that maybe every legal Avenger vanishing off the face of the earth might trump that, but Bruce hadn’t known, couldn’t have known that by bringing Bucky and himself out here that he was dooming them all.

It can’t stand either of them. It’s barely done mourning Peter and clearly something about Bucky and Bruce senses _wrong wrong wrong_ because it shrieks and cries and refuses to let go of Clint’s throat until they both stand down. Clint doesn’t know if whatever magic keeping the electricity off is stopping Bruce from transforming or if Bruce and Hulk still haven't worked out their issues from space. Either way Bruce ends up beside Bucky in the barn and Clint is sure he’s never owned this many chains, let alone ones that can hold super-soldiers, and yet Bucky ends up just as trapped as Steve.

The last person in the Compound who knew about the farm is now here, imprisoned along with them. The Accords Committee will notice they’re missing. New S.H.I.E.L.D. will notice they’re missing. Pepper Potts will notice they’re missing.

But they’ll have no idea where to look.

***

It gets bored more easily now Peter’s gone. It tries to use Cooper to fill the void but he’s not the same, he’s gone quiet and small like the rest of the Barton children and he can’t give it what Peter did. So it flits from game to game like a manic hummingbird, never settling on any and then wailing at Scott for new ones. Scott tries, but he’s worn to the bone and it won’t let him rest. He slips up one time and calls it Cassie and they all tense, but it _likes_ it and Scott realizes his mistake when it refuses to be called anything else, and so everyone does.

Except Tony. Tony has stopped following the script, refuses to be Dad, although not outrightly rebelling enough to get any of them hurt. Clint knows what he’s doing. He's trying to get sent to the barn so he can be with Peter, whether he can help the kid or not, but it _knows_ and it keeps him close instead, knowing that’s the crueler punishment.

It alternates between the parents’ bed and the nest, sometimes several times in one night, dragging Tony, who it’s punishing, and Scott, who’s its new favorite, with it. Neither of them sleeps more than an hour at a time, and soon Tony is too tired to resist, and Scott is too tired to play, even when it pulls his hair and shrieks in his ear and its constant clinging to him means there can’t even be a repeat of the bathroom.

So much for splitting the load.

The only silver lining is that its boredom means it brings out the toys in the barn more frequently. Steve and Sam and Natasha start to make more regular appearances, haggard and pale but alive. Tony stares at each of them whenever it brings them in, desperate for information, and they nod at him. Peter’s alive. Rhodey’s alive.

It doesn’t take them out of the barn, or Bruce or Bucky either, and their bottled water won’t last forever. Bucky can hold out for longer than the others and Bruce will survive eternally, although perhaps that’s worse, given his time in space.

They’re doing what they can for Rhodey. There’s nothing they can do for Peter. And time for both of them is running out.

***

It takes Clint two days to realize he’s done exactly what his children have; sunken into himself beyond where anyone else can reach, even Natasha, even Laura, slogging through routine, his field of focus narrowing to the three real kids he’s sharing this prison with. That’s all he has energy left for, and he can no longer focus on Scott wasting away from exhaustion or Tony coming apart at the seams or the dying teenager in his barn. There’s just Cooper, Lila, and Nate, Laura no more than a helping presence to ensure their survival.

True despair comes with a broken plate.

They’re all so tired, and Lila doesn’t mean to drop it. Scott is tending to the thing at the time and reacts on instinct when he hears a young girl cry out in pain and surprise, turning away from it to tend to her bleeding hand.

It loses it.

It’s been grumpy and stroppy for days. It’s lost Peter, and Tony won’t play, and now it’s losing the rest of them, unable to comprehend that they need fuel and rest to recover, and attention shown to a child other than itself is too much to bear. So it lashes out.

Clint’s across the room before Lila hits the ground, screaming and clutching her face as blood drips over her already bleeding hand. He has nothing, no weapons, no strength, just himself but somehow, through all the bullshit life has dumped in his lap, that has been enough. Until today.

He ends up in the barn, and he knows this time when the chains click into place that it’s permanent, that he’s not a broken toy but a defective one, like he always has been, whether it was for Barney or Duquesne or Chisholm. The only person he’s ever functioned properly for was Loki.

The others don’t try to talk to him.

Not others. Names. They have names.

The others don’t try to talk to him. He doesn’t try to talk to them. At some point someone shoves a bottle in his lips and he spits it out, because what’s the point in prolonging this. A day ago, a week ago, because time doesn’t make sense anymore, he would have said Laura is the point, Natasha is the point, Cooper and Lila and Nate are the point but he’s failed them.

A part of him always knew he would.

***

It has to be close to the end now.

Everything’s muffled, like someone’s laid him out under a white sheet already. He wonders if he should have tried harder to break out of the chains when he had more strength. If the balance of lives saved as Hawkeye was worth the time missed as Dad. If there was anything else he could have done in his entire miserable life to stop himself from ending up here.

***

He wonders about a red-haired woman, a brown-haired woman. He remembers their names long after he forgets his own.

***

He wonders if they’ll bury him, or just leave him here. Makes sense that he would die in chains. 

He knows they’re not coming for him.

He’s not sure who they are anymore.

***

The world is all shades of dark, and then it’s a bright, vibrant yellow and the chains are falling from around him and cool metal hands are catching him as he falls forward and he’s looking up into oddly human blue eyes in a metallic face and if he doesn’t think he’s hallucinating a rescue then, he does when he’s pulled into a pair of familiar human arms and his vision is again obscured, this time by long, red hair.

“Farmhouse,” he thinks he manages. “It’s in the farmhouse.”

She doesn’t want to leave him, but he’s as rescued as he can be. He doesn’t go with her to the final fight. In the end, there’s nothing he can do but sit and wait and listen to the horrified screeching as Wanda Maximoff gives the monster hell.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relationship reveal: Clint & Wanda

Wanda doesn’t kill it.

None of them knows where it goes. One moment there is shrieking and shouting and wailing from the farmhouse and the next someone is pouring water over Clint’s lips and Natasha is telling him that it’s gone, it’s gone and it’s over and they’re safe. 

They’re not safe.

The priority is getting Peter back to the Compound, and Clint asks Laura to take the kids and go. She disagrees without words, but knows him too well to fight this battle. She understands why he needs to stay. On other days, she would have pushed, made him come too, but Wanda and Vision are staying on, and that’s enough for her to kiss him goodbye and help a bandaged Lila to the quinjet.

There’s a third member of their rescue party too, who only introduces himself after the others have left. Something about it not being time for them to meet yet.

He says he’s a doctor, even though he’s not dressed like one. He offers Clint answers, explanations, but Clint’s not having it. He doesn’t care what it was, or where it came from. All he cares about is if it’s coming back.

Strange assures him that it’s not. This is what it does. It takes root in homes and plays Happy Families until its dolls are too broken to play with. Then it moves on, leaving no trace of itself behind.

Clint won’t even remember that it happened.

Strange offers that information as condolence, like a balm to a wound. It’s anything but. Clint doesn’t want to forget. He can’t believe that it’ll never come back. And there is no worse  threat than the one you don’t know is coming.

When Strange says there’s nothing he can do to preserve Clint’s memory, Clint turns to Wanda instead. He does want he never thought he’d ever do, and asks her to revoke her promise to never mess with his or anyone’s head again.   


She tells him no. Then she tells him it wouldn’t make a difference anyway.

Wanda understands better than Strange why Clint needs to remember that this thing is out there. He’ll take it all, the memories of deciding to sacrifice Tony and Natasha, of Lila’s face splitting open, of dying slow and useless in the barn while that thing inhabited the same house as his baby.

He’ll take it all. Anything but forgetting.

But there’s nothing they can do. In a few days, it will be like it never happened.

They all stay, to do the most they can while they remember why it has to be done. 

Strange helps the best he can,  promising to weave every spell and enchantment he knows to prevent it from coming within a hundred miles of the Barton farm.  He reminds Clint of Tony, a deeply buried soft streak peaking out from beneath the arrogance and ego. But what the sorcerer can offer isn't enough. The contamination has set too deep.

Clint considers shutting up shop and leaving the house and the fields and that damn barn to rot, or taking a wrecking ball to the place and being done with it. Wanda stops him, reminding him that Laura and the kids will have no memory of this either; that they deserve a home to come back to.

He sleeps outside on the grass the first night. Wanda keeps vigil by his side and Vision watches over them both, the android having long since apologized for their fight in the Compound. He’s wary around Clint, keeping as much distance as he can. It reminds Clint so much of an awkward high schooler trying to impress his prom date’s dad that he would have laughed if he still had that in him. He can see Wanda is happy or, at least, happy that Vision is with her, and that’s enough for him.

He wakes up the next day with a plan, one he  needs Tony for. He hates that need, what he has to ask,  because in all the years he’s known one of the richest men in the world, he's never asked for anything like this. But time and resources are short, so he picks up the phone.

Tony doesn’t even hesitate, just rattles off a credit card number and gives Clint carte blanche before updating him on Peter. The teenager's recovery is nothing short of miraculous. The doctors are theorizing that all he needed was to be removed from the stimuli engaging his danger sense, and his healing factor took over the rest. Clint knows better. He knows because Laura has said Lila’s scars are fading fast, too fast, and his child doesn’t have the enhanced healing to fall back on that Tony's does.

It’s already happening; the marks of the creature vanishing first, their memories of it next.

Not everything is reversed so easily. Grass is rapidly growing over the four graves by the barn, masking the disturbed earth, but the McGinty house remains empty. Clint calls Hill to let her know the fate of New S.H.I.E.L.D.’s charges, but she’s confused, adamant that there’s no record of any family staying in that house for months.

They’re going to be forgotten, as if they never existed. Clint didn’t even know their real names.

After confirming that everyone at the Compound is on the road to recovery, Clint and Tony talk. It’s long and painful and needed, and the resolution isn’t easy, but at last they put the Accords and Germany and the Raft behind them. There are no apologies, no admission of fault. There's only understanding and reconciliation brought about by shared trauma and the patience to listen.

They’re both going to forget. They’re going to go back to being Stark and Barton to each other, Tony avoiding any room Clint’s in, Clint not inviting anything different.

Clint lets it happen anyway. He wants to convince himself that even if the memories fade, the feeling won’t, that they’ll fight to find some shared ground after this, but he doubts it. He’s seen and known too much to have hope for anything else. But while Clint knows they won't remember this conversation, Tony doesn’t, so he lets them both have this, even if it’s only temporary. All the best things are. Peace and happiness are made to be strived for and worked on, not destinations to arrive at or rewards to be won.

He leaves Strange to it and takes Wanda and Vision into town the next day, Vision morphing into a human form that almost shyly holds Wanda’s hand as Clint takes them to pick up supplies, starting with a moving van. It still takes several trips to get everything he needs.

Clint spends the new two days stripping apart the farmhouse.

He replaces everything. Every piece of furniture, every carpet, every inch of wallpaper, week-long tasks done in hours with Wanda’s magic and Vision’s aid. He restocks their emergency supplies. He buys new chickens. He doesn't sleep until it's finished.

It’s not enough. He can still feel it in the house; an infection that’s taken root under the floorboards. This isn’t home anymore, because home is meant to be safe, and this _isn’t safe_ , not even with Strange’s magic and Vision’s watchful eye and Wanda’s company as Clint curls up in the fresh nest he’s made in Cooper’s room as the sun sets, skipping the usual reds and golds and heading straight for navy.

He knows it’s his last night. He can feel it, the memories sapping out of him, despite how tightly he hangs on.

Laura’s already forgotten. She’d called him that evening, excited about bringing the kids home _(not safe, not home)_. She didn’t cling on to the pain. She never does. She let it go.

Strange tells Clint to do the same. He’s going to forget, one way or the other. It will hurt less if he just lets it happen.

He can’t. He lies in the nest with Wanda watching over him and thinks how wrong that is. He should be the one watching her, who promised to take care of her after he robbed her of the only family she had. He’d tried to give her a new one, to give her that safety and protection, and that had ended up with her in a collar and straight jacket with him locked up right next to her.

He hadn’t protected her, or her brother, and come morning he won’t be able to protect his family from that thing either, because he won't remember that he needs to.

He’s left himself recorded messages, written notes around the house, painted words on the wall. They fade faster and faster with each attempt. In a last-ditch effort, he aligns a photo of his children with a sketch Steve had done for Wanda of her and Pietro, grinning arm in arm. Then he grabs one of Nate’s toys, an old doll Nate hasn't played with in months. He draws an ‘X’ over its face and shoves in the middle. After an hour, it’s still there. The small hope isn’t enough for comfort as the hourglass slips towards morning.

He asks Wanda for the memories one last time as they lie in the darkness of Cooper’s bedroom, the new curtains blocking out the moonlight that had made shadow animals on the walls. She says she can’t. He decides to believe her.

They can't sleep, so they talk. Clint asks if either of them will remember her visit. Wanda says she doesn’t know. They had agreed that she would be gone by morning, long before Laura and the kids return. She’s still a fugitive; neither of them wants to endanger them that way, and she doesn’t want to put Clint in that position. Clint asks her if she knows that Steve made a deal for her; that she can come home if she wants to.

She says she knows. She says it’s not home. She says she has too much work to do.

As the hours slip by, they can both feel it - the last of the memories fading for both of them. So they keeping talking.

They start  with Vision. Clint tells her he’s happy she’s found love, if that’s what it is. She says it is, even though she hasn’t told him. She says she feels guilty; that she knows he missesTony, the team, the Compound. She feels guilty for more reasons, for stolen moments in between missions never being enough, even though that’s all they can give to the other. She feels like she’s taken everything he can give her and yet she still craves more, and that’s why she hasn’t said it, because she just feels as though she’s taking, taking, constantly _taking_ , and her mission is too important for her to stop.

They talk about Pietro next.

They never have. The subject has always been too raw, even years later, and it’s only because they know that they’ll both forget in the morning that Wanda can say that she loves Clint, and his family, and everything Clint has given her and she still wishes it had been Pietro who had lived. Clint listens. He understands. He forgives her, and even in the darkness he can see the weight that forgiveness lifts from her too-young shoulders.

Then Clint tells her everything. 

He starts with the thing, what it made him think, because he needs to confess before he can’t remember what sins he’s confessing to. How he prayed that it would hurt Tony first, how he had decided to sacrifice Natasha, how he had given up in the final moments in the barn, long before the fight was over.

He tells her that there are days he feels guilty for what he did under Loki, but worse are the days when he doesn’t feel guilty at all, when he starts to believe the team’s insistence that it wasn’t his fault. That there are days he misses Phil more than he can stand and those are better than the days that pass without his handler crossing his mind. He tells her that there are moments that he loves Natasha more than Laura. He tells her that he fears that, without his family as his anchor, he’d just kill and kill and kill and only half-pretend it was for a good cause.

He tells her that he wants to remember for more reasons than fear. He wants to remember for more than just being able to protect his family. He wants to remember because he deserves to.

They don’t stop. They talk and confess and listen and talk. 

Then they forgive each other, and say the other is both understood and loved and that those are not mutually exclusive. It’s the last thought either of them remembers as the sun begins to rise.

***

Clint can’t remember why he wakes on the floor of Cooper’s bedroom.

In the end, he decides to put it down to paint fumes. Laura rolls her eyes at the latest round of remodeling, but takes it in stride as she always does, even as she says she misses the old wallpaper and tells Clint that the kids are hungry and to go make breakfast.

Clint frowns as he enters the chicken coop, trying to peg if a chicken is missing, or there are more than usual (are they breeding?) The numbers seem wrong either way. Then he shrugs it off, putting it down to a night slept on a floor with a body that is no longer young.

On the way to the kitchen, he pauses by the mantlepiece.

He recognizes the photo. He recognizes Steve’s artwork. He doesn’t recognize the doll in the middle.

He asks Cooper first, if his art is going in a new direction, but both him and Lila deny responsibility and Clint knows his kids better than to think they’re lying. He goes to put it back on the mantelpiece, something telling him that it should be there. That it’s there for a reason - an important reason.

Then he hates the sight of it, for no discernible reason except that his past contains so many triggers by now that he’d need an encyclopedia to keep track of them all. He doesn’t give it a second thought as he tosses it in the trash, already forgotten. 

Clint goes to the kitchen, where his wife is gathering the kids for breakfast. The sun is streaming in through the window, illuminating the barn. He has a vague thought that he should clean it out, then dismisses it. He wraps his arms around Laura's and kisses her on the cheek. She tastes like lavender, and he breathes her in as he asks her if she wants pancakes or eggs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Whumptoberverse continues in [You're Always Spider-man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26791210/chapters/65356297)
> 
> You can check out my other Clint & Wanda fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23311447%22%22)

**Author's Note:**

> Told you it gets dark. 
> 
> Come scream at me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jinxquickfoot), especially if you also write fanfic or do fanart! Share your work with me!
> 
> Hey are you tired of me plugging my podcast yet? Well if so that means you've clicked on a fair few of my fics and for that I am very grateful, kind reader. You could spend your time anywhere, and you spent it here, and that is quite wonderful of you.
> 
> "Kill the Cat" is a film and screenwriting podcast which my co-host and I take our favorite films and screenplays and break down why and how they work, and in a week we're releasing our episode on Avengers: Infinity War. If that sounds up your ally, pop over to [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ypaen3yM5Q&t=1s&ab_channel=KilltheCatPodcast), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5hCprc9UCBZP4srFrBXKT1?si=0CF3IKjGThK0tohIqcEy4Q) or wherever you get your podcasts and hit that 'subscribe' to get notified when we release the episode.
> 
> And hey. You deserve good things. Even that one. Especially that one.


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